


shade of the meadowlark

by allandmore99



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Have a little faith Book, Healing, Multi, Self-help, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 10:34:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30003564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allandmore99/pseuds/allandmore99
Summary: Andy and Booker understand each other like no one else can, but over the years of grief they’ve lost their way, until they cause each other more pain than anything else. Newly mortal, Andy wonders if there’s a way back home.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien Le Livre/Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Booker | Sebastien le Livre's Wife
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	shade of the meadowlark

**Author's Note:**

> So this was inspired by this post : https://oldguardhc.tumblr.com/post/645392169676537856/hands-in-the-air
> 
> It really resonated with me and how I imagine their relationship would be when I allow myself to picture it in all the ugliness and messiness that would result from two immortals with tremendous grief, guilt and substance abuse issues.
> 
> Anyway, I challenged myself to try and puzzle out how they could possibly come back from that and build a healthier relationship—with a lot of self-introspection, time apart, and Quynh’s timely assistance.

_ We can control how we live. And to be honest, Book? You and I, we’ve been doing a shit job of it. _

Andy would like to tell herself that that was a watershed moment in their relationship, that she had learned a lesson that was six thousand years overdue, that the next time she saw him after their parting on the beach, she would talk to him about how they could do better, how they could start living alongside the grief that perpetually threatened to submerge them, instead of allowing it to control them.

She would like to tell herself that, but the truth was that old habits were hard to break. Instead, the first time she saw him after the beach, it was after she had snuck away from the others, telling them she was doing recon for a mission and snapping at them when they offered to back her up, unreasonably panicked that they would figure out that she was returning to him and the fucked up way they orbited each other, like they were each other’s salvation and damnation all at once. 

She waited on the steps of his shitty apartment building in Paris, taking absentminded swigs from a bottle of whiskey, and waited for him to drag himself in, also taking absentmindedswigs from a bottle of whiskey, and she pushed him against the wall so hard that his head made a sick cracking sound. She tried to get him to fuck her pressed up against the wall, but they had both had too much whiskey to coordinate it, so she just climbed into his lap, right there in the filthy stairwell, and rode him hard.

This undefined thing between them had been nice once, around the turn of the century when the world had seemed new and promising with miracle inventions like electric light and swift steamboats and pictures that moved, and the sharp edge of their grief had been dulled somewhat. They had come together out of boredom, then, and out of a need for comfort and companionship, and if it was never quite love, it was nice, it filled the empty hours, the empty spaces where her wife and his wife should have been.

But it had been some sixty or seventy years since they had gotten too bitter to do this without nastiness, and she smiled at him, all teeth, and asked him how he could have done it, how he could have betrayed them. The pain in her voice was as real as the pain in his when he pleaded with her to understand, “I did it for both of us, Andy,” he gasped out in between the kisses that drew blood from both their lips, “so that we could finally let her go,” and there was no doubt that he meant the woman that had haunted his dreams and her waking moments for centuries, “so that we could rest, so that we could be at peace,” but that had always been a fool’s hope, because there was no peace for the likes of them. 

Afterwards, there was always a little space for tenderness, as if they had stripped each other so raw that they had managed to expose their long-buried affection to the air. They curled up together on his thin mattress, Andy pulling out a pack of cigarettes and offering him one—he made a token protest, that she shouldn’t smoke so much now that she was mortal, and she just chuckled and shrugged. “Being a mercenary’s not exactly great for my health, either,” she pointed out, and he let it go, not wanting to ruin whatever stolen sweetness they could find in the afterglow.

She entangled the fingers of one hand with his while she held her cigarette in the other, and asked, holding his gaze so that he would know she was serious, “you’re taking care of yourself okay, Book?” He laughed wryly, taking a drag of his own cigarette and resting his head on her shoulder for as long as she would allow it. “I’m taking care of myself—well, let’s say better than you might have feared and not as well as you would probably like,” he answered, and his honesty surprised her enough that she barked out a laugh, and tilted up his chin for a kiss. She tasted strongly of smoke, yet it was the sweetest moment they had shared all night, something untainted by the years of grief that had first devoured the two of them individually and then started chipping away at the bond between them.

“Well, that’s something, at least,” she offered when they pulled apart, and then she nudged his side. “You look tired, Book, get some sleep. I’ll be here in the morning,” she added, because she could make that promise, at least, and be reasonably sure of keeping it. It made her think about that David Bowie song that always reminded her fondly of her years in Berlin. Nothing could keep them together, it was true, but through the years, they had always managed to steal a day, here and there.

She was there in the morning, as she had promised, but when he woke up, she was already dressed, perched on the edge of the bed, and he knew as soon as he looked at her that their borrowed time had run out. “We can’t do this anymore, Book,” she murmured, and he gritted his teeth, because it hurt, of course, it hurt to destroy each other the way that they did, but it didn’t hurt as badly as being alone, as missing her like a limb.

He scrubbed at his bleary eyes, trying not to think about the fact that he had slept better pillowed on her chest than he had in a long time. “Please don’t—please don’t leave me alone, please don’t tell me I’ll never see you again—“ he begged, long past caring how desperate he sounded. 

She smiled sadly at him, her hand reaching out to grasp his ankle, but he didn’t miss the fact that she was keeping a careful distance between them. “You’ll see me again, Book,” she promised, and it rang true enough that it stopped his whirring mind from spiralling completely out of control. “I don’t think we could stay away from each other if we tried. You and I, we understand each other, in a way that nobody else alive does, not the lovebirds who’ve never had to be alone, not sweet Nile, not any of the mortals who flit in and out of our lives. But what we’ve become...it’s not healthy, even by our standards.” She sighed, squeezing his ankle. “I’ve known that for a long time, but I didn’t know how to fix it, and I didn’t care enough to try and find out. It just seemed like one more fucked up thing, you know, in our fucked up lives. But, well. If I don’t have that many years left, then maybe it’s worth trying to patch things up so I don’t die a miserable old woman who can’t do anything but hurt the ones I love.”

He knew better than to reach for her, knew better than to do anything but to lay there and listen while she held his ankle and his fate in her hand. “Look,” she said, firmly. “I’ll see you again, I can promise that. And I’ll be in touch before then.” She gestured between them, vaguely, but he understood what she meant. “I don’t know if...I don’t know if we can do this again,” she admitted. “I don’t know if we can be intimate with each other without it hurting more than it helps. Maybe we can someday, but we have to, fuck, Book, we have to at least try and piece ourselves back together first.” She squeezed his ankle once, then let go, and he already felt the absence of her touch like an ache. “At least, I’m going to try, and I hope maybe you will too,” she conceded.

“I’ll...I’ll try, Boss,” he promised her, because he couldn’t do more than that, couldn’t banish the skepticism from his voice. How could he hope to become more than half a man, now, when he had the fresh guilt of his betrayal and the fresh grief of her mortality on top of everything else that had tormented him for two hundred years?

“That’s all I could ask, Book,” she said, equal parts fond and sad. She bent to kiss him, a clear goodbye, and then she picked up her backpack. She turned, just once, at the door, and said “I’ll be in touch,” and then she was gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> I only barely know where this is going better than Andy does, but I will find them a happy ending somehow, sooner or later.
> 
> The title is from No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross, by Sufjan Stevens, which is all about self-destructive behaviour in the wake of grief, which seemed to fit. 
> 
> I almost named the story after David Bowie’s Heroes, though, because And you, you can be mean/ And I, I'll drink all the time/ Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact/ Yes, we're lovers, and that is that/ Though nothing will keep us together/We could steal time just for one day” also fits this version of them to a T, but I tried to work it into the story instead :)


End file.
